Although I’ve always been a fiscal conservative, I’ve also been an environmentalist for most of my life.

For many years, I was a member of the Sierra club and the NRA, and saw nothing amiss about that – I saw them as a natural fit.

HOWEVER, I share the opinion of many here regarding the greens. I call them environazis. I quit the Sierra Club in disgust when they became very political, around 1990. (This was even before they got into the global warming scam).

I’m all for electrostatic scrubbers on coal plant stacks – those reduced a lot of pollution, pollution that was very real. With those (and I think all US plants have them, and have for years) I’m very much pro-coal.

Climate change? I’m a “Lukewarmist”, in that I think mankind’s activities do have a warming effect, but it’s an order of magnitude or more less than AGW advocates claim, and also largely not due to thyeir favorite boogieman, CO2. Does manmade CO2 have an impact? IMHO yes… of around a hundredth of a degree. (Far to small to detect, let alone worry about). I do however thank that combined human activities (especially farming, due to changing ground albedo and putting water vapor in the air)change global temperature, and are keeping us warmer by less than a degree. I also think this is the only thing staving off the onset of a new glacial era, for which we are overdue. (and which would be by far the greatest disaster in human history, assuming we survived it).

I do agree, sort of, with today’s enviros regarding population. I think it is madness to have a population at the planet’s maximum carrying capacity (whether we do or not is, however, arguable) because then any problem means mass death. Also, I think it madness to just assume that technological advances will keep coming along to allow population growth – in so doing, we’re betting the farm on not only a new technologies, but on their timing. Furthermore, some resources are finite, land being one of ’em. So, I do oppose population growth, as I see no valid reason for it and see inherent risks in it, including diminished quality of life. (For example, more and more of the population cooped up in cities. Would I move to a city, even a “good” city, if I could double my after-expenses income by doing so? Hell no, quality of life means too much to me. Money is important, but it isn’t everything.)

However, in the western world, our populations aren’t growing, so much of this is a rant against a problem that no longer exists. On the flip side, a declining population has risks as well, such as having so much of it older and dependent.

I did favor the greenie policy of keeping China in poverty, though in my case that was for geopolitical reasons, not enviro ones. (I think empowering China has done nothing more than create a monster and a threat.)

So, at the core of it all… do I think the present-day enviro movement is anti-human? I’d say most of it is, to a large degree. And I used to be one of ’em, and still consider myself one, to a degree. (though not their current incarnation).

Conservatism and environmentalism are totally compatible. The difference between a conservative environmentalist and an eco-fascist-greenie nazi is that the conservative actually wants to preserve the environment and so looks for solutions that contribute to that goal.

Good point. That sums up why I find the environazi opposition to the Canadian pipeline incomprehensible.

If it was an either/or case of either us buying the tar sands oil or leaving it in the ground, I could comprehend their motive. Not agree, but at least comprehend.

However, reality is that either it goes to us, or China. In the latter case, there is the energy cost of shipping it to China to consider, coupled with the energy cost of bringing replacement oil here. So, in not building the pipeline, they are increasing net pollution.